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Public Libraries Tinker With Offering Makerspaces
eggboard writes "Public libraries are starting to build labs that let patrons experiment with new arts, crafts, and sciences, many of them associated with the maker movement. It's a way to bring this technology and training to those without the money or time to join makerspaces or buy gear themselves. It extends the mission of libraries to educate, inform, and enrich. Many are now experimenting with experimenting."
In general, 3D printers are kind of like film editing equipment. Some places have those, the main thing is that you cover the cost of the inputs.
Now, if you could do a 3D pop up graphics novel that you "printed" that would be super cool.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This kind of thing has happened before. The ancient Library of Alexandria was much more than a library. It was a government -funded research facility and think tank where many of the greatest minds of the ancient world worked. Granted that it was not a public library like those found in ancient Rome, it's not a surprise at all that public libraries would try to enter this space in at least some form.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I have lots of wonderful weird old books from around WWII. It seems that in that era community centres (or centers) had equipped workshops for citizens to drop by and do some woodworking, or repair electrical appliances. After some reflection, I realized this is not compatible with the social model of consuming to keep the economy growing. But it would be nice to have a Mr Fixit type person running a shop for every x number of citizens in an area would can not only run 3D printers, but all the other stuff we seem to have lost in the last half century or so.
Mostly random stuff.
And what will replace it? I'm sure this has been asked before but I don't know the answer. Library literally means a collection of books—static, physically recorded information—the kind of thing future libraries are least likely to collect. It's quite a transformation. Library is coming to mean a gathering/making place of things drawn dynamically from elsewhere.
Is it me or is the maker movement based around a bunch of hispters patting themselves on the back for doing stuff humans have been doing for eons?
No.
For the first time, makers (prototype makers/modelers in my day when we did this in the snow - uphill - both ways!) don't have to use milling machines, lathes, foundries , molding machines and other assorted equipment to get forms they need. No machine shop access required.
A couple of thousand dollars for a 3D printer or free replaces hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment - and specific skills and training.
Machine shop skills are a time consuming skill and when you're keeping up with other technology and designing and inventing .... it's nice not to worry about machine shop skills.
NOW - if you want to mass produce your item, those machine shop skills (lathe, milling machine, foundry) will become well respected and needed.
Its how the Library system stays relevant. They would like to be a hub for community engagement and sharing of information.
The Toronto Public Library does this by letting you "try out the latest technology by participating in classes, workshops, and meetups." at their Digital Information Hubs
A workshop where you can learn woodworking, metalworking, etc. would be WAY more useful, but I guess those aren't hip enough. Back when my dad was in the army, they had a woodworking shop on post and he ended up making some of the most beautiful furniture (having learned how to do it from classes there). Our family still treasurers it today.
I would much rather learn to use a lathe or welding equipment than a 3D printer. But it's sort of like I was a kid. Karate studios on every corner, but not a single place where I could learn to box.
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Certain air force bases had a garage with tools where airmen could bring their beater cars and fix them up. There was generally some volunteer car mechanic there from the motor pool pitching in to help.
Now I don't think they have this anymore, mostly due to liability.
It is a shame that communities can't have things like this anymore. It was a great place to meet new people and learn from fellow tinkerers. Now our "communities" are anything but - in the U.S. we're a nation of individuals behind their 6 ft. fence, never interacting with our neighbors, precisely because there are vanishing few places where we can meet on common ground.
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He has a point.
From reading TFA, it's obvious that this isn't a group of skilled craftspeople coming together to share ideas, equipment, and workspace, but rather an attempt to educate the proles in how this new technology can be used to make Christmas ornaments. More like "Summer College" classes for your 6th grader than a real attempt at collaboration.
The downside to this approach, at least from my point of view, is that the people who would use the equipment access to work on real projects are going to be stuck waiting in line behind 1,000 stay-at-home moms, who are laser-cutting snowflakes with their kids faces on them because they have nothing more productive to do with their time.
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Outside of making 3D printers accessible I'm not sure how libraries could feasibly offer workshops. People don't only work in plastic, and presently 3D printing is a novelty for your average person.
With the Chicago library's lab, they offer various workshops on some small example projects (e.g. a 3D printed trinket or a laser cut greeting card) to expose people to the basic process and offer open lab hours. You can look at the schedule here. I'm not sure where you see a problem with the feasibility of this.
3D printing is to a large extent still in the novelty phase, but as it gains in popularity so will the practical applications. I have a broken plastic component of a relay in a 70s era pinball machine for which purchasing a replacement isn't an option. It is however a simple geometric design and I plan on printing a replacement at the library.
Is it me or is the maker movement based around a bunch of hispters patting themselves on the back for doing stuff humans have been doing for eons?
It is just you. I am a member of Techshop, and I see fellow members making incredibly innovative stuff that would have been impossible for an individual to make even a decade ago. It is not just 3D printing, but also precision laser cutting, desktop CNC machining, sensors, and cheap/free off-the-shelf software that do computer vision, voice recognition, can compensate for flexing components, etc. From the outside you see "hipsters". From the inside, I see the beginning of a world changing revolution.
He has a point.
From reading TFA, it's obvious that this isn't a group of skilled craftspeople coming together to share ideas, equipment, and workspace, but rather an attempt to educate the proles in how this new technology can be used to make Christmas ornaments. More like "Summer College" classes for your 6th grader than a real attempt at collaboration.
The downside to this approach, at least from my point of view, is that the people who would use the equipment access to work on real projects are going to be stuck waiting in line behind 1,000 stay-at-home moms, who are laser-cutting snowflakes with their kids faces on them because they have nothing more productive to do with their time.
Might I suggest that if you have a "real" project, maybe you should be getting your own equipment instead of tying up public infrastructure which is specifically designed and intended to be accessible by people who aren't already skilled craftspeople. Because everyone who is now a skilled craftsperson wasn't at one point, and the only way to become skilled is by practice (and that is kinda the point behind this initiative).
Your complaint sounds vaguely like a Ferrari owner complaining they can't go 150mph on public freeways. No shit, public freeways aren't for intended for racing, and public "makerspace" equipment isn't intended for serious projects.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
As a taxpayer I'd rather fund local libraries that get the masses off the streets, educated, literate, potentially productive and even entrepreneurial. If I was going to cut bloated government bureaucracies that are not essential to the freedom or security of our nation, I'd start with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
As a taxpayer I'd rather fund local libraries that get the masses off the streets, educated, literate, potentially productive and even entrepreneurial.
Except that's not what the libraries are doing. They don't deal with "the masses", and they don't create literacy to start with.
If I was going to cut bloated government bureaucracies that are not essential to the freedom or security of our nation, I'd start with the U.S. Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
That's nice, but the issue you seemed to be replying to was that tax dollars are going to fund the entrepreneurs who need to build prototypes of their products but don't want to spend the money for the equipment to do that themselves. You might consider that the people who would be making use of this service won't be the poor undereducated ones who never go to the library because they're too busy working to feed their families, but the richer better-educated people who are already up the chain and have ample free time to do this.
And you ignore the difference that the "local libraries" are funded by local tax dollars in local tax districts while the offices you want to eliminate are federal. Cutting either or both of the targets you want eliminated will do nothing to fund libraries.
You might consider that the people who would be making use of this service won't be the poor undereducated ones who never go to the library because they're too busy working to feed their families, but the richer better-educated people who are already up the chain and have ample free time to do this.
Did you seriously just type that?
There are plenty of folks who have "ample free time" on their hands, and the vast majority of them are not richer better-educated people. We have a huge government funded idle-class.
In the past High Schools made shop space available in the evenings for evening adult "classes." Classes meant you got access to the shop and whatever advice the shop teachers could give for your project.
In the 70s' my father turned a Fiat 500 into an electric car at Arroyo HS at the after school shop sessions. It involved ganging several motors and buildings a mount, and at the time a relay-relay logic controller. I knew people who spent the evenings at the HS wood shop making furniture.
The idea of a public tinkering space is not new. Further, it creates an innovative atmosphere as groups of tinkering minded people gather together.
Actually the democrat view is "Give a man a fish so his kids don't starve to death while he learns to fish."
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